230 LEAFLETS. 
it stands would have been less flagrant had the specific name 
appeared as Mitellastra caulescentes, for so, the substantive and 
participial terms of it would have been at that agreement which 
the law of the language so inflexibly demands; though the very 
idea which I thus put forward presupposes recognition of Mitel- 
lastra as the plural that it is, which quality the author neither 
saw for himself nor was taught to see. 
What I have now said is conclusive and might suffice; but I 
am learning to forestall frail subterfuges. Here no shelter can 
be taken under the name of Asa Gray. He made the name 
Mitellastra. If I say that he made it for the name of a genus, 
or that there is the least probability that he thought of it as a 
future generic name, I state an untruth, and am become a great 
and good man’s calumniator. He framed Mitellastra as a sec- 
tional name, and in the plural, as is correct. Mr. Rydberg, on 
page 98 of the said Flora, has propounded ten sectional names 
under Heuchera, all of them in the plural, as they should be: 
but if some botanist of the future, taking those his ten sections 
for genera, and the ten sectional names for generic names, shall 
proceed to write for species Bracteatae bracteata, Pilosissimae 
pilosissima, Rubescentes rubescens, and so to the end of the 
seventy, he will be following to the letter Mr. Rydberg in the 
case of Mitellastra caulescens ; for, grammatically, the whole 
seventy-one will be exactly parallel. 
That Rubacer means red maple, the author of that name him- 
self placed beyond dispute when he printed that combination 
Rubacer odoratum. The ending um is absolutely fatal to the 
witless claim that any Rubacer is a Rubus and not an Acer. 
When on page 211 of this volume I presented that argument I 
called attention to its character as unanswerable. In a recent 
display of loosely scattering polemics’ the author of the syn- 
onym fubacer leaves unrecalled this particular point I made. 
There may be readers who may charge this to the supposed dis- 
1 Torreya, vi, 165-169. 
